At the end of last year the Spanish government announced their intention to partially privatize the national lotteries. The suggested price was ridiculously low. Basically, the government was reacting to "the markets" demanding 5%-7% for long-term lending by selling the lotteries at a 15%+ implied yield. A lot of people made the same back-of-the-envelope yield calculation and were wondering how one would go about buying some stock when this is privatised...

In December, the Government announced the privatisation of 30% of the State Lotteries and Bets. The motive the economy minister Elena Salgado's confessed to a foreign media outlet was "to cash in". However, the numbers don't add up. The government announced that with this 30% they intended to raise 5bn, when the public entity produces an income of 3bn a year for the public treasury. The PP, opposing this "firesale", values the operation at 20bn for it to be profitable

Asset stripping is the rage in a great many bureaucracies these days. Our university keeps cutting its productive programs, selling the assets to the altar of the budget cut god. No one seems to mind that the revenues these programs produced is also gone because, of course, students are stupid, and if you take away their options, they will keep giving you money anyway even if your herd them into less appealing (though of course productive) programs.

Yes. I thought that you were supposed to get more conservative as you got older, but for me aging seems to be a process of getting franker about my distaste for these people. I've always been standoffish about being real activisty, but anymore I just say do it.